CHANGED TYPES OF ENGLISH BEAUTY

New Zealand Mail, 5 February 1902, Page 51

CHANGED TYPES OF ENGLISH BEAUTY

A famous living artist—a great authority oil what is peculiarly the study and aim of art, beauty—has been heard to maintain that women of our generation have a quite uncanny power of altering themselves for the overthrow and enslavement of their victim, man. If it be true at all, it is probable they always had the power, and almost certain they never let it lapse from want of using it. And certainly when we look round at the pretty English girls of this present year it seems as if it were true. What is true is that the type seems to have completely changed. Some 80 years ago a famous chaperon used to lay down as the condition of certain triumph that a girl should have eyes. Other points of beauty went for nothing or for little. If she had eyes she would do, and by “do” that much-requisitioned chaperon meant that she was sure to capture a desirable husband. And the painters of those days showed us what sort were the eyes that did all tbe mischief. They were not demure, or provoking, or flashing; they were simply large, lazy, languorous, and generally blue. There was nothing “unholy” in the expression of the eyes; it was only in the colour —they were essentially ingenue eyes. Lady Hamilton had them, but Romney managed generally so to deepen them with shadow that you never realised the colour as blue. Now, with this beauty of eyes, and especially of blue eyes, came the.beauty of complexion, the healthy pink and white of tlfe late Georgian, and even tho early Victorian, era. We have but to turn to any portrait of that timo to see that the oval fee, “the blue eye, dear and dewy, and the infantine sweet air of her,” were what the painter knew his sitter would expect. Then came the change, Rossetti, so to speak, discovered throats; Du Maurier made us look at chins; Hazlitt sang the praises of pallor, passion-pa!o pallor; eyes were forgotten or overlooked, and “ regularity” van unnecessary to nose e Figures became long and angular, dress ignored figure and changed to drapery, and tho whole type altered. Burne-Jones,

Rossetti, and Du Maurier seemed to have between them fashioned a new kind of beautiful woman The portraits of the seventies record the changing fashion, and it was part of it that thS age of beauty was thought to come later in the life of woman. The type passed to exaggeration m the aesthetic craze, but all the same, throat and chin and mouth and pallor ruled us, and eyes and complexion went for little or nothing.

But the reaction was inevitable, and not long delayed. It has come already. Women have again uncannily changed themselves for the destruction of man, Ihe Rossetti type is disappearing, and gradually giving place to two other types, winch indeed have little in. common. One £ ay frankly be called the Romney type, ihe hair is brown and curly, the face is short, the nose is slightly upturned, the corners of the mouth turn up a little, too. The onl y word of praise -which you know would be inapplicable is “dignified.” It is a soubrette kind of beauty, captivating, provocative, domestic, certainly not over intellectual, with no great tendency to literature or art, winsome, and conscious of its irresistibility. You see it just now largely leavening all classes of English society. There is nothing of the urande Dame about it. Can you fancy one of the Rossetti-Du Maurier type beauties ever stooping to conquer, ever descending to the barmaid, and yet ie?v, am x ing Miss Hardens tie ? You will see the type all through London to-day, in ladies, in shop girls, in servants, a type very attractive for its healthy, lovable comeliness. Romney gave it to us for our admiration, and the London hairdresser has helped most girls more or less to come under it. The short locks with the curves support the curves of the retrousse nose, give zest and piquancy to the impertmence of the face, and give to the whole type its provocative charm. It certainly is not a refined kind. The face is broad, fat, white. The nose is rather shapeless. The ears are rather large and decidedly ugly. The mouth has little torm ux its lines, no firmness "when it closes, little expression when it lies open. The roll of that back hair accentuates all these defects, and brings many individuals, really unlike, apparently under the same type. It won't last.

But there is another form of face which we have begun to see latterly which is a type, and which has come to stay. Its beauty is more or less that of the early Victorian type. The eye here has for its essential a natural outlook. It does not beg the charity of notice, it does not care for it, but enjoys itself in the world, and has its beauty from its pleasure. The bridge of the nose now returns to its normal importance. It is seen as that of the delicately lifted aquiline. Du Maurier 80 years ago annexed the high bridge, accentuated its defects, and made it the special preserve of the Dowager Duchesses. The ugliness of the exaggeration has now passed away. The delicate aquiline has a beauty of its own, especially when with it comes in once more the large eye that has room for a large lid. This type has also the charm of complexion, a wholesome red and white, cheeks that blush subcutaneously, a face that ignores the surface of powder and the tint of rouge. This beauty, all the same, is rather dollish, and of a stupid kind, with its chin apt to be weak and its brow low and shelving. It is essentially aristocratic, and belongs to the granddaughters of Du Mauri er's dowagers.—“ Daily News.”